System and method for bill payment from billing or payroll system

Abstract

This disclosure relates to a system and method for bill payment from a billing or payroll system. In particular, this disclosure enables individuals, such as retirees or employees, to effectively pay their bills directly from their retirement community's billing system or their employer's payroll system, respectively, which has a number of benefits including providing retirees/employees with a convenient system for automating bill payments, and providing the retirees/employees a clearer understanding of their discretionary income and, in turn, providing retirees/employees with benefits to their overall physical and mental health. This disclosure also provides increased certainty to third party billers, knowing their bills will be paid from a relatively secure source, namely the retirement community's billing system or the employer's payroll system.

1 . A method, comprising:
 paying a bill owed by an individual to a third party biller using a payroll or billing system of an organization by first directing funds from the payroll or billing system to a secondary account of the individual and then directing funds from the secondary account to the third party biller.   
     
     
         2 . The method as recited in  claim 1 , wherein the individual is a retiree. 
     
     
         3 . The method as recited in  claim 2 , wherein the organization is a retirement community. 
     
     
         4 . The method as recited in  claim 3 , wherein the payroll or billing system is a billing system of the retirement community. 
     
     
         5 . The method as recited in  claim 4 , wherein the paying step includes paying a plurality of bills of the retiree from the billing system of the retirement community. 
     
     
         6 . The method as recited in  claim 2 , further comprising:
 permitting the retiree or an authorized agent of the retiree to select when the paying step occurs within a period of time, and wherein the paying step occurs at a time corresponding to the selection of the retiree or the authorized agent.   
     
     
         7 . The method as recited in  claim 2 , wherein the secondary account is used solely for completing the paying step and is not a primary account of the retiree. 
     
     
         8 . The method as recited in  claim 2 , further comprising, using a neural network, suggesting that the retiree pay another bill using the payroll system. 
     
     
         9 . The method as recited in  claim 1 , wherein the payroll or billing system communicates with a software application configured to at least partially perform the paying step. 
     
     
         10 . The method as recited in  claim 9 , wherein the software application is a plug-in for payroll or billing software. 
     
     
         11 . The method as recited in  claim 1 , wherein the third party biller is a personal savings account of the individual. 
     
     
         12 . The method as recited in  claim 1 , further comprising providing the individual with a reward for completing the paying step. 
     
     
         13 . The method as recited in  claim 12 , wherein the reward is interest accumulated in the secondary account. 
     
     
         14 . The method as recited in  claim 1 , wherein:
 the bill is owed by a first individual and a second individual to the third party biller,   first funds are directed from the payroll or billing system to the secondary account on behalf of the first individual,   second funds are directed from the payroll or billing system to the secondary account on behalf of the second individual, and   the combined first and second funds are directed from the secondary account to the third party biller.   
     
     
         15 . The method as recited in  claim 1 , further comprising using a neural network to issue a warning to the individual if the individual is seeking to pay a bill that, in the determination of the neural network, will have an adverse influence on the physical, mental, or financial health of the individual. 
     
     
         16 . The method as recited in  claim 1 , further comprising anonymously comparing the individual to similarly-situated users and disclosing the results of the comparison to the individual. 
     
     
         17 . The method as recited in  claim 1 , wherein the secondary account is requested to be created by a software application when the individual initially begins using the payroll or billing system to pay third party bills. 
     
     
         18 . A system, comprising:
 an application configured to run on a computing device and configured to cause the computing device to direct funds from a payroll or billing system of an organization to pay a bill of an individual owed to a third party, wherein the funds are directed to the third party via a secondary account of the individual.   
     
     
         19 . The system as recited in  claim 18 , wherein the individual is a retiree. 
     
     
         20 . The system as recited in  claim 19 , wherein the organization is a retirement community.